Posted on 05/15/2008 6:38:09 PM PDT by B-Chan
I’m with the B-guy.
His warlord scenario was amusing.
That's not surprising, coming from a Balrog.
I’m with you with B-guy. I got a good chuckle out of it. BTW: OSCS(SW)(Ret), LHA 4, FFG 29, CG 58, CDS 8, DDG 68
Can sailor, eh? Good on yer.
How about a liberty chit, Chief?
I live in an area with a lot of Amish and Mennonites.
Mennonites drive and live with modern conveniences.
Amish hire English to drive them around.
Amish have many businesses and use off road diesel to run their machines.
Both shop at Walmart. Both buy their seeds at the same places the rest of us do. Both utilize mail order for many of their specialized items. Buggys use materials that must be extracted or processed from natural resources.
Both utilize our health care system. They don’t believe in any insurance, so they pay out of pocket. I know Amish in their 80s who have had open heart surgery. The ones with less money go to Mexico via train for surgery.
Horses cost a lot of money/labor to feed. If they don’t get seen by a vet, they get ill and die. They live a long time and at the end of their lives, they are useless for work. There are no legal slaughterhouses for horses, so people either let them die and bury them or shoot them and then bury them.
Bikes require parts that require machines that require natural resource extraction, transport and electricity. Good bikes are not cheap any longer. While they may be ok for cities and flat land and young healthy folks, they are useless in winter, in hilly areas or for the elderly, the infirm or for carrying more than a few items. In heavy rain, they are also unsafe.
Gasoline isn’t the only thing we get from petroleum. The substitutes are grown, which means crop land, which requires diesel and natural gas inputs for planting, cultivating, fertlizer, drying, storage and transport to consumers.
Green houses in the North require heat at both ends of the season and electric fans in the hotter periods. Hoop houses utilize plastic, which is either petroleum or derived from plants (see above).
No electricity means no water except for hand pumps which are only good for shallow water tables. This also means no flush toilets, no sewage treatment and even on farms, for the past decade the mandate has been for pump assisted septic tanks instead of gravity flow. Windmill pumps are machines that require parts that require machinists, tools and electricity. Blacksmiths need coke or coal or even charcoal. Charcoal takes a lot of time and a lot of hardwood to manufacture. Today, hobby blacksmiths use electric blowers. Foot operated trip hammers are mostly antiques, expensive, are not made by blacksmiths themselves and are rarely even available. We have one and its value has increased a lot in the 20 years since it was used.
IOW, a short, brutal life for everyone, no matter how prepared for survival. Cooperation is a fantasy, given that we all have just so much energy, so much time and so much goodwill. Small groups with a common ideology have the best chance at cooperation, but we are all just human. Everything must be paid for and if not with money, than with time, energy and skill. Who will have food and energy, even human energy, to trade with each other? How many people have the skills needed for this sort of life?
They are talking apocalypse. There were a boatload of ‘beyond thunderdome’ novels in the 50s and 60s. The question is will the transition be abrupt or insidiously slow until the tipping point.
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